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Explore real-time news, visuallyPakistani officials rebuke U.S. for drone strike
View Photo Gallery — Pakistani Taliban leader reported killed in drone attack:?Hakimullah Mehsud was at a northwest Pakistan home targeted by a suspected U.S. strike, according to local intelligence officials. By Tim Craig, ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The U.S. drone strike that killed the head of the Pakistani Taliban drew expressions of outrage from political officials here Saturday, capped by a public rebuke of the Obama administration.
A day after three missiles were fired into a vehicle in northwestern Pakistan, senior Pakistani Taliban members confirmed Saturday that Hakimullah Mehsud and four others had been killed in the attack, a major victory in the decade-old U.S. campaign targeting Islamist militants. But after they had buried their former chief, Pakistani Taliban leaders began to regroup, vowing retaliatory strikes against U.S. interests.
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Explore documented drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and SomaliaLatest stories from ForeignU.S. drone strike prompts rebuke, threats in Pakistan
Tim Craig The day after the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban moves to elect a new leader.
U.S. strike kills Pakistani Taliban chief
Tim Craig His death could cripple the group, but also threatens to “sabotage the peace talks’’ between the militants and Pakistan’s leaders.
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With security heightened across Pakistan, the sharpest effect so far has been the derailment, at least temporarily, of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s efforts to engage Mehsud and other Taliban leaders in peace talks. In an angry, hour-long, televised news conference Saturday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan accused the United States of “ambushing” the Sharif government’s efforts by authorizing the strike.
“The government of Pakistan does not see the drone attack as an attack on an individual, but as an attack on the peace process,” he said.
After Khan spoke, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry lodged a formal protest with U.S. Ambassador Richard G. Olson, saying the attack had violated Pakistan’s sovereignty. The Foreign Ministry also plans to protest to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
When Sharif returns here after spending the weekend in London, he and his national security team will reexamine “the entire perspective” of future relations with the United States, including NATO’s use of Pakistani highways to transport equipment to and from Afghanistan, Khan said.
U.S. officials had no immediate comment Saturday, although a White House official noted Friday that Mehsud was linked to a 2010 plot to bomb Times Square in New York.
Mehsud, who Taliban leaders said was buried early Saturday in North Waziristan, was also implicated in a 2009 attack on a CIA outpost in eastern Afghanistan that killed seven Americans. The United States posted a $5 million bounty for him, as well as for another senior Pakistani Taliban leader, Wali ur-Rehman, who was killed in a drone strike in May.
Several analysts said those killings represent a major setback for the militant group, which is composed of dozens of factions and is loosely affiliated with al-Qaeda, as well as with the Afghan Taliban.
But Pakistani Taliban leaders met Saturday to try to select a new leader and shake off suggestions that Mehsud’s death will have a lasting impact on the group.
Some Taliban officials said that Khan Said, the group’s second-in-command, has emerged as a front-runner to succeed Mehsud. But two Taliban members who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the group has decided to appoint Sheheryar Mehsud, a little-known 33-year-old militant who has fought in both Kashmir and Afghanistan, as its temporary leader.
Other officials said that a final decision could come as early as Sunday.
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